The scattered musings of a poet in isolation.
Project — Doodles
Client — Shruti Iyer

May 2021
Project — Doodles
Client — Shruti Iyer
May 2021
Scope of project

Book cover design
Illustration
Doodles (on the walls of isolation) is a collection of poems written by Shruti Iyer during the national poetry writing month of 2021. At the heart of pandemic-driven isolation, Shruti used these poems as an outlet to express herself.

Mirroring the scattered and chaotic nature of her thoughts, the poems are experimental as well—featuring an assortment of meters, styles, and themes.

Objective

Create a book cover that represents the extemporaneous and free-spirited nature of Shruti’s poetry, conveying the hopefulness woven into her words.

Outcome

I designed an illustration-heavy cover featuring doodles of motifs and figures from several of the poems.

The relatively crowded and free-flowing nature of the composition evoke the dreamlike beauty of what are, in essence, personal reflections in the form of poems.
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Mockup of the Doodles book. Purple cover with white spine.

the scattered musings of a poet in isolation.

At the heart of pandemic-driven isolation, Shruti Iyer penned a collection of poems as an outlet to express herself. Doodles (on the walls of isolation) is a book compiling this miscellaneous set of works.
Project — Doodles
Client — Shruti Iyer
May 2021
project details
Mockups of the front and back of the bookEarly-stage sketches of the coverFront, back, and spine designs
Each poem is a ‘doodle’—a product of Shruti’s musings during the period of time it was written in. The book is a compilation of these poems, uncoordinated yet linked.

There is no better way to represent the essence of this project than to compose a collection of several individual doodles, each representing an idea or motif from a poem. Each bringing with it a distinctive concept, forming an exquisite collective.
sketch of hand holding cocktail glass
“I definitely cannot tell you that, cheap bootleg whiskey with coke and lemon tastes like

laughing during
lake-side sex
on a smog filled night”
“Expel all that air from in your lungs,

backed by the force of a thousand hidden hurts.”
sketch of a megaphonesketch of a partially rolled open street map
“…her back shades me from the sun as she guides the two-wheeled ride around the twists and turns of roads I now have forgotten.”
“…when you go outside after weeks and weeks and weeks of walls and webcams and wondering if you’ll ever again get to brush past a stranger and for just a second be assaulted by the vivid scents of their life.”
sketch of a hand coming out of a laptop screen
sketch of a twisted spine, disintegrating at the end
“and the resolve that knots your
spine is crumbling.
 
But really, you tell yourself, it’s fine.”
“This magic, this wonder,
With the rising sun go under.
Bonfire now slumbers
While lit from within we now hunger.”
sketch of an abstract bonfire
sketch of a stylised dragon, shaded using circular patterns
The central illustration of the dragon emerging from the pages of the book was created by incorporating motifs from several poems. The circular patterns were inspired by the works of Hiroyuki Doi and some of Shruti’s art as well.
project details
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